The mastermind behind Apple sheds his low profile and steps forward to tell his story for the first time. Before cell phones that fit in the palm of your hand and slim laptops that fit snugly into briefcases, computers were like strange, alien vending machines. They had cryptic switches, punch cards and pages of encoded output. But in 1975, a young engineering wizard named Steve Wozniak had an idea: What if you combined computer circuitry with a regular typewriter keyboard and a video screen? The result was the first true personal computer, the Apple I, a widely affordable machine that anyone could understand and figure out how to use. Wozniak's life-before and after Apple-is a "home-brew" mix of brilliant discovery and adventure, as an engineer, a concert promoter, a fifth-grade teacher, a philanthropist, and an irrepressible prankster. From the invention of the first personal computer to the rise of Apple as an industry giant, iWoz presents a no-holds-barred, rollicking, firsthand account of the humanist inventor who ignited the computer revolution.
iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Every engineer—and certainly every engineering student—should read this book….It is, in a nutshell, the engineer's manifesto. -- Guy Kawasaki, author of The Macintosh Way
Everyone should enjoy Woz's very personal and engaging story….What a wild ride! -- Ray Kurzweil, inventor and author of Singularity Is Near
Worth waiting for…adds intriguing new information to the history of the origins of the personal computer revolution. -- Alan Deutschman, author of The Second Coming of Steve Jobs --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Everyone should enjoy Woz's very personal and engaging story….What a wild ride! -- Ray Kurzweil, inventor and author of Singularity Is Near
Worth waiting for…adds intriguing new information to the history of the origins of the personal computer revolution. -- Alan Deutschman, author of The Second Coming of Steve Jobs --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
Steve Wozniak has been inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame and has received numerous awards, including the National Medal of Technology and the Heinz Award. He lives in California. Gina Smith is a technology and science journalist and author. She is the author of The Genomics Age, which Barron's named one of the top twenty books of 2005. Gina was the first technology correspondent for ABC News, and she has made several appeareances on Good Morning America and World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. From 1990 to 2000, she authored Inside Silicon Valley, an award-winning column in the San Francisco Sunday Chronicle. An AudioFile Earphones Award winner and Audie Award finalist, Patrick Lawlor is also an accomplished stage actor, director, and combat choreographer. His recent audio includes the New York Times bestseller The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell (Tantor). "Lawlor is masterful." ---The Philadelphia Inquirer
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
217 of 233 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Limited audience; Interesting Story,
By
This review is from: iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It (Hardcover)
Yesterday, I took a long look at the new book by Steve Wozniak, iWoz. Personally, I'm intrigued by the science-based creativity that led to early Apple products, and also the psychologically-savvy thinking that went into making computers user-friendly.
The book will be interesting to a specialized audience. You need to be interested in the early history of personal computers (e.g., the legendary Homebrew Computer Club). You need to get a kick out of the amusing but sometimes unflattering lore that defined Apple's history and culture. You need to want to know about Wozniak's remarkably innovative engineering as well as Apple's entrepreneurship. You have to dig the views and personality of a successful but unusual and reclusive countercultural person. It probably helps if you resonate with Wozniak's personal style, and dream about making innovative contributions somewhere, somehow. Some observations: 1) When he claims to have "invented" the personal computer, he's not being too grandiose. He created some really beautiful early computers. The lore is that these contraptions were the first to have typewriter based keyboards; the first to be useable right out of the box; the first low-cost computers to have color, sound, hi-res graphics, and floppy disks. He developed software that changed industry standards. And to believe Wozniak is to believe that he was the origin of these ideas, surrounded by other creative geniuses like Jobs, Osborn, Marsh and others. Perhaps others shared in these innovations. But there's no doubt that Wozniak was one of the great "out of the box" thinkers of the Silicon Valley "revolution." In the book, Wozniak describes developing all of these things. 2) If you haven't looked at an Apple II in awhile, it might be worth doing so while you read the book. The electronic circuits and boards of these early Apple machines were works of art and genius. The components were arranged in ways that defied conventional wisdom. I found the motherboards in the Apple IIs to be simple, elegant and striking. Today, the technology is obsolete but the beauty endures. Wozniak's story is more interesting when you realize that he's primarily responsible for this great stuff. 3) The book helps elucidate Wozniak's personality and thinking style. He's the math-science-electrical guy who works privately in the back while he implements his (and others') visions of what a product can be. (If you've examined the electronics and layout of those old machines, then you have no problem believing that Wozniak was the science-math-electrical guy who was part scientist, part artist). In the book, Wozniak shares influences, anecdotes and pranks. This is not the guy who habitually seeks power, or the limelight. He's the guy who normally would toil in obscurity, surrounded by friends and thinkers who let him do his thing and appreciate his skillful vision (and nutty sense of humor). He was able to work among the corporate power brokers for a number of years, on his terms, but he's not the sort of person who will immerse himself in corporate culture for long. It may be that his `81 plane crash and brain injury signaled the end of his cutting-edge work at Apple. But it is hard to imagine someone like Wozniak shifting gears and living forever amongst the suits... even at Apple. I can believe that Steve Wozniak is a brilliant guy with a big heart and a wicked sense of humor. I can imagine how his sense of generosity, justice and creative thinking might make it hard to endure the growing pains of a company like Apple. 4) Wozniak offers his advice on what it takes to be a great engineer: Don't waver; see things in grayscale; work alone; follow your instincts. His thoughts on these matters are worth a look. Keep in mind that he's telling you about his way, which jibes with his personal style. There's no one right way. 5) Guy Kawasaki (former Apple employee) has written a review of this book. It can be found online. His take is different than mine, though he, too, offers a positive review. 6) There are plenty of other books, and even a movie, on Wozniak, Jobs and the PC revolution. There are other books that focus on Wozniak (e.g., Kendall, Lemke, Capps). Wozniak has a website that contains lots of autobiographical info. Then there's "Pirates of Silicon Valley", the movie. Personally, I'm not particularly interested in getting caught up in all the Apple/PC drama that has made its way to the media. But maybe you are...
74 of 80 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You say you want a Revolution??,
By
This review is from: iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It (Hardcover)
Steve Wozniak (with the obvious and very able assistance of Gina Smith) has written a gem of a book in iWoz. This book is literally for everyone, techies and non techies alike, as the Revolution created by Mr. Wozniak and Steve Jobs truly changed our world. I have often thought of the two as highly different individuals brought together in a common cause with radically different skill sets. Cast The Woz as John Lennon and Steve Jobs as Paul McCartney. Lennon wanted to CREATE something special, something beautiful and something new. Wozniak clearly did this at Apple. McCartney wanted to become huge, well known and wealthy. Jobs did this for all at Apple, very much including the author as Wozniak had other motivations that occupied his very busy mind. Mr. Wozniak does write, very interestingly, about the engineer as an artist. He really thinks of it that way. Any who have heard him speak or met him, as I have been fortunate enough to do on a few occasions, know that what he wrote was, and is, the real Steve Wozniak. Ms. Smith did a marvelous job at making the book almost entirely understandable to those of us whose minds are not wired as an engineer. Yet it is the voice of Mr. Wozniak that comes through. Truly a remarkable accomplishment as Wozniak can ramble yet, in this wonderful autobiography, his thoughts are cogent and clear. Even concise.
This book is a great read for all. It shows what passion can create. Buy it, read it and give it to all your family and friends to read.
56 of 65 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
interesting but repetitive and bragging,
By
This review is from: iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It (Hardcover)
I really wanted to like this book. Woz is a geek icon, after all, and the early stories of his life and inventions are the stuff of legend. They had to be better coming straight from the horse's mouth, right?
The stories themselves are interesting: redesigning commercial devices on paper to reduce the number of chips, why colour was so important to him, knocking together Breakout in a few sleepless days, making the Apple I. And there's all of Woz's pranks over the years. But the problem is, Woz just doesn't have the gift of storytelling. All through the book, I felt like I was simply reading a transcription of stories that he's been telling in person every time he speaks for the past 20 years. (Reading the afterword, I'm pretty sure that I'm right on this regard.) Okay, so they were scrubbed for um and ah, but that's about it. It gives the book a conversational tone that makes me feel like he's skipping over all the really interesting stuff. With the loving touch of a good editor, this could have been a much better book. It was immensely repetitive, with Woz re-telling stories multiple times. There wasn't nearly enough about the early days of Apple, nor about Woz's departure from the company. The tone of the book was entirely too self-congratulatory, with hardly a page going by where Woz didn't say how clever he is. It trails off post-Apple. If you're interested in the history of computing, and specifically Woz's contribution to it, there are many other places to start that will give you a much better picture. Read this book only after you've read those.
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